Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales

by Oliver Sacks

The analogy of chemical transformation leading to the emergence of wholly new compounds was central to Coleridge’s thinking, and at one point he planned to set up a chemical laboratory with Davy. The poet and the chemist were fellow warriors, analyzers and explorers of a principle of connectedness of mind and nature.*2 Coleridge and Davy seemed to see themselves as twins: Coleridge the chemist of language, Davy the poet of chemistry.

One can never tell in advance what the practical use or scientific implications of anything new might be. Who would have thought that germanium—an obscure “semimetal” discovered in the 1880s—would turn out to be crucial to the development of transistors? Or that elements like neodymium and samarium, regarded for a century as mere curiosities, would be essential to the making of unprecedentedly powerful permanent magnets? Such questions are, in a sense, beside the point. We search for the island of stability because, like Mount Everest, it is there. But, as with Everest, there is profound emotion, too, infusing the scientific search to test a hypothesis. The quest for the magic island shows us that science is far from being coldness and calculation, as many people imagine, but is shot through with passion, longing, and romance.